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Month: March 2014

I’ll tell you, I gave this a lot of thought. When is it time to move on? move forward? to re-invent? What is the protocol for surviving a horrific relationship and moving towards a better one? How long am I supposed to grieve? to be alone? to sulk? to rediscover myself? Who determines the “appropriate” amount of time to just BE whatever it is I am? What I have discovered very recently, is that I was never in a relationship. Oh… on the outside and for all intents and purposes that’s what it looked like, but I had NO relationship. Whatever it appeared I had was just that…an appearance. I was alone for every major milestone and event in my life. He was never supportive or empathetic or helpful or consoling. So I found that it was a lot easier to move on than I thought and that my fear of the unknown turned to excitement and opportunity. I found that interacting with people I had previously shut out, turned out to be very rewarding and that most people I knew couldn’t stand to be around him, so they stopped being around me. I rediscovered my love of dance and art and music. I began dancing again just for the sheer joy of it. It’s different now, I am limited in my movement and flexibility due to the issues with my back but I still love it, I dance with and through the pain. I’m hooping again, almost daily, because it is a hobby I love and I find beautiful and an extension of me. I am playing poker in a league where I meet different people every week. I am no longer paying his way, I find I have a lot more money these days…..I’m no longer footing his bill. It’s quite pleasant. So when do you allow yourself to accept being happy? I say the time is NOW. I have been incredibly, almost mind blowing happy and I never thought that it would be in the cards for me. It is not due to another person, but a collection of people who have loved me enough to be strong for me, to wait for me to find my way , when I could not love myself. It’s due to the reflection of myself through someone else’s eyes, that I am finally willing to see. The time is now. I am happy and I deserve to be.

I’m finally letting go. In the purest sense of those words. Those who used to occupy my thoughts no longer have free reign in my mind. Some days, I would be consumed with the need to understand WHY or HOW certain people could be the way they are. WHY would someone lie about something so inconsequential or HOW could someone who claimed to have love in their heart be so filled with rot and waste? Now I just ACCEPT that that is WHO they are. Their parts aren’t spliced together the way mine are. I have started to feel pity. I came from a most fucked up childhood. I suffered abuse and witnessed abuse. I ran away. I was assaulted. I was homeless, married too young, a teenage mother, a high school drop out, an anorexic/bulimic. I have had cancer, I have cheated death, I lost friends and family to death both natural and self inflicted, I was a product of divorce, twice. I was made fun of, picked on for being “poor”, I was a fighter, I was cast aside, forgotten. I was all of those things and yet I still treat people better than someone who grew up with both parents, who had the world handed to him, who never worked for anything, who never had loss, or felt grief, who was healthy, never faced death head on. I am still open to love and hope. I still dream. I am so confident in my own ability to carry on and be better than ever, that I have pity. My life is my own. His belongs to hate and greed and selfishness. I pity him because I have let go and he is the same. In this life, if you don’t grow and evolve, you die. I pity the weak. I pity him.

So as I was reading and re-reading my own life story the 2 things I wanted people to get from my life is this… #1 As I have said before I take 100% responsibility for the choices, actions, reactions etc I have made as an ADULT. I find it empowering to take responsibility. I don’t shun it. I don’t pass it off to other people. It’s mine. I own it. I have felt a lot of pain and heartbreak in my life but it has allowed me to know that I can still FEEL something. I am not numb. I have at times shut off and withdrawn into myself for protection, but I still have the ability to feel EVERYTHING… and #2 I don’t want my life to be perceived as tragic. This isn’t a poor me story. It’s just simply, my story. I don’t want sympathy. I want understanding. I want a connection, if not to a single individual, then a group. I want people to look at me, at my life and think if that fucked up, anorexic, bulimic, obsessive-compulsive, abused, broken, damaged woman can get up every morning with a smile on her face and still see the good in the world, than so can I. I feel so fortunate to have survived my life so far. I almost feel invincible. Lately, I feel beautiful. Inside & out, despite my scars…maybe because of my scars. They have taken on a life of their own, much in the way a tattoo can feel like armor, my scars have morphed. I was going to go through a painful laser process to try to eliminate the scar on my face but it’s growing on me. I look in the mirror and think to myself, just one more notch on my belt. I am not done in this life yet. I am just starting. I answer questions about this scar on my face daily. At first, I recoiled, winced, felt the pain of the incident over and over again each time. Now I feel the resiliency in my soul. There is nothing I fear anymore and no one I fear anymore and that is a very powerful place to be. I am not a tragedy. I am inspiration…if only to myself.

I received a notification yesterday from word press stating simply…”Happy Anniversary”. It has been one year since I started writing my story. One year compiling 39 years into roughly 74 pages. I went back and re-read from the beginning. I laughed, I cried, I gasped, I reflected and then I smiled. I have trans versed this path of mine with no regrets. I am happy. Still. Despite this life. Of the things I want to be very clear, I blame NO ONE but myself for the choices and paths I have taken as an ADULT. I hold NO ONE but myself accountable for my emotions, my reactions, my actions. I am me. I am human. I am entitled to feel and think and say anything I want in regards to my own life experiences. I have retained the friends and family that matter to me and that I matter to. For some, my shelf life is still good. For others, it was simply time to move on. My purpose in their lives is over and their purpose in mine I take lessons from. I no longer feel the need to explain myself, to anyone. I have made a CHOICE to forgive those people that have wronged me and hurt me the most. It doesn’t make their offenses any less severe or damaging or wrong, it simply means that I have replaced those negative things with love. The love of life. I love my life. Despite this life. I have never lost the youthful optimism that in theory, should have been stripped from me long ago. In the face of all things beyond my control as a child and all things that the damage bled into as an adult, I still believe in anything and everything and at times nothing. I told a wonderful person I met recently that if he wanted to know anything about me, he could read my story. He read the first page and said to me “That story was just the prequel”. …and he is right. So Happy Anniversary to me.

Lies are like riding the ocean waves. The trough is calm giving time to recover, time to process, time to feel. And then there’s the wave, the crest approaching, looming large, knowing that with the break comes the pain, the anvil dropping, the heart lurches, seized in the power of the moment and I hear the one last thing I didn’t think I’d hear. But it’s not the last thing, it comes again with the next wave, mounting a full force attack on everything I knew, or thought I knew. It leaves me disoriented, confused, without direction. I’m pulled out with the tide into vast emptiness, salty tears not making an ounce of difference in the sea around me. Believing the lies is worse. I feel naked, exposed and honestly just plain stupid.

But… I’m a Florida girl, I’ve been riding waves like him since I was little. I learned to swim almost before I could walk. I’ve got strong arms and can carry the weight of his lies like a champ and my head will ALWAYS be above water. I will ALWAYS get back up. I will ALWAYS win. My family didn’t raise a failure like yours did. My family raised a fighter. You would NEVER catch a woman like me running out the back door hiding from my responsibilities. You showed your hand and it’s weak. Just like you are weak. Just like the people you surround yourself with.

On November 4th I was assaulted by a woman who hit me in the face with a beer bottle. I called 911, she was arrested, charged with felony battery and assault. I had 7 stitches and CT scan of my head and now have a permanent scar on my face. The state’s attorney pressed full charges and we are set to have a trial on March 20th, 2014. E was a witness for me/the prosecution. I had a hearing on 2/21/2014 because both myself and the state’s attorney felt she was in violation of her bond by being at a location that I was at and not leaving and even after the police were called and asked her to leave, she stayed. E was a witness to that event also and was suppose to make himself available to testify if needed at the hearing on 2/21/2014. Instead, as I was leaving my house to go to court to face the woman who assaulted me, I was served with a no contact order by E. E has been trying to get out of paying for any and all medical expenses stemming from the accident where he hit me with his truck. soooooo on the morning that I am already a wreck going to face my attacker and hoping that the justice system will finally DO something, I am served with a restraining order by my very recent ex boyfriend. The only witness on my behalf, besides the responding officers.

So I walked into the courtroom on Friday the 28th for the no contact order hearing doing my best impersonation of confident. Inside I was scared, stressed, anxious, hurt and disappointed. E decided in order to avoid the truth unraveling all around him for everyone to see, that a restraining order against me would be better. A good friend came with me for moral support. I was going to need it. I had all my evidence. All my screen shots, emails, text messages, statements notarized from the court, everything. I was simply going to go in, dispute the lies and walk out of there. E decided to show up with the defense attorney in the criminal case I have with the States Attorney’s office from the assault. E was a witness and still is for the prosecution. E failed to show up the Friday before at the criminal hearing for the violation of bond because he was busy being a coward and a liar.

So there I am, sitting there my mouth hitting the floor because the man that “loved” me, that hit me with his truck, that lied about going to jail, that lied to everyone around him, that was a WITNESS in a FELONY BATTERY case on my behalf just showed up with the DEFENSE attorney of the woman who assaulted me. Talk about conflict of interest, talk about intimidation, talk about code of ethics, talk about the lowest form of life on the planet. This man,E refuses to pay a DIME for my medical expenses after hitting me with his truck, which thankfully he admitted to doing in this particular hearing, but he suddenly has money for an attorney????? He has the audacity to use the same attorney, a regular at his bar, the man who is defending the woman who assaulted me as his council??? WOW. what a scumbag. I wish I could find an attorney to accept beer as payment….

I decided to look up reviews on this particular attorney and was shocked (well not entirely) to see all the negative, disgusting behaviors he has been involved in…and then it hit me. They are all perfect for each other. It takes scum to represent scum….adios